‘Missing Picasso’ obtained in Romania could be hoax – media

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A painting that Romanian prosecutors said on Sunday might be a work by Pablo Picasso stolen in 2012 one is the most likely a forgery created like a publicity stunt, Dutch media reported.

State broadcaster NOS cited author Frank Westerman, who helped locate the painting in Romania’s Tulcea county after an anonymous tip, turning it up to Romanian police on Saturday.

Westerman told NOS on Sunday he received an e-mail from the Belgian theatre company and that is staging a play a couple of famed art forger. He said the painting he recovered has been a forgery hidden as part of problematic hoax.

Separately a previous curator on the museum that owned the authentic “Tte d’Arlequin”, or Harlequin’s Head, told Dutch television that depending on photos he or she seen in the painting that’s found, it got a forgery.

Romanian prosecutors, who said Sunday they were seeking to verify the work’s authenticity, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The BERLIN theatre company in Antwerp, Belgium, that is certainly using the play about forgery, said in the carefully worded tweet so it had “brought back” Tte d’Arlequin inside of a new frame.

On its website it stated it would “be back with additional particularly this issue yearly few days” and listed links to reports on the discovery on the painting.

A Romanian man and many accomplices were found guilty of the theft in 2013, but none of your artworks happen to be recovered. Romanian experts believed not less than three analysts were burned in an effort to destroy evidence.